Online Exhibitions

Napoleon, Nelson and the Knight

Sir James Malcolm

Period:

Georgian Period

Description:

Lieutenant-Colonel Sir James Malcolm, KCB, was a Scottish officer of the British Royal Marines who served in the American Revolutionary War, in the Napoleonic Wars, and with noteworthy distinction in the Americas during the War of 1812, for which he was Knighted.

The Four Knights of Eskdale

In 1730 the Duke of Buccleuch gave Sir Pulteney Malcolm’s grandfather, the Reverend Robert Malcolm, the lease of a house and sheep farm at Burnfoot, on the north bank of the River Esk, four miles upstream from Langholm. He hoped that this would supplement the Reverend’s meagre income as Minister of the neighbouring parish of Ewes.

Shortly after Robert’s death in 1761, his son George married Margaret Pasley, the second youngest child of a neighbouring family. They began their married life in the small house of Douglan, Burnfoot. George had intended to follow his father into the church, but a slight speech defect precluded this, so he took up farming.

Over the next twenty years the couple had 17 children, ten sons and seven daughters, all but one of whom survived into adulthood. Unfortunately George’s farming income did not increase with the number of his children, and he was bankrupt by 1780.

As a result he was forced to find careers for his children when they were still very young. Fortunately he was a man of considerable charm and he had influential patrons. Four of his sons went into the Navy, two into the East India Company, two became independent merchants in India, one an Anglican priest in England, leaving one to take up local employment in Scotland.

Four of them, James, Pulteney, John and Charles, achieved knighthoods and became known as The Four Knights of Eskdale.